Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Poet Ben Jonson wrote in his
tribute to William Shakespeare: “He was not of an age but for all time!”

Lucky guess.

More than 400 years
later, we’re still reading, watching and arguing over Shakespeare. Most of us
are, anyway.

High school students
continue to struggle over the Bard, thanks to the Common Core standards, but
most major universities long ago dropped the requirement that English majors
take even a single Shakespeare course.

Two years ago, students at the University of Pennsylvania removed a
large portrait of Shakespeare from the English Department and replaced it first
with a picture of Audre Lorde, an African American writer, feminist and civil
rights activist, and later with a collage of 88 writers and filmmakers.

Last June, a production of “Julius Caesar” in New
York’s Central Park became a conservative cause célèbre when Caesar was depicted as a Trumpian with blond
hair and a red tie, “whose bloody stabbing is seen as offensive and
inappropriate to some who have seen it,” The New York Times reported.

Defenders countered the tragedy shows the
consequences of violence and its disastrous effects.

Shakespeare was born in April 1564, so before the
month slips away, let’s give him props. Bob Dylan did.

When the great Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, he asked Patti Smith to deliver his speech at the awards ceremony in Stockholm. Here's an excerpt:

I was out on the road when I
received this surprising news, and it took me more than a few minutes to
properly process it. I began to think about William Shakespeare, the great
literary figure.

I would reckon he thought of himself
as a dramatist. The thought that he was writing literature couldn't have
entered his head. His words were written for the stage. Meant to be spoken not
read.

When he was writing Hamlet, I'm sure
he was thinking about a lot of different things: "Who're the right actors
for these roles?" "How should this be staged?" "Do I really
want to set this in Denmark?"

His creative vision and ambitions
were no doubt at the forefront of his mind, but there were also more mundane
matters to consider and deal with. "Is the financing in place?"
"Are there enough good seats for my patrons?" "Where am I going
to get a human skull?" I would bet that the farthest thing from
Shakespeare's mind was the question "Is this literature?"

Leave it to Dylan to
imagine Shakespeare not as highfalutin artiste but a playwright juggling his words
and picky details. Dylan has it right, of course. Shakespeare’s plays are meant
for the stage, not the page.

I know this after seeing
three Shakespeare plays in two weeks. It was the first time, but won’t be the
last, I sorta-binge-watched the Bard.

First was “Romeo and
Juliet” at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, a good warmup for the
American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, where “Macbeth” played one evening and
“The Taming of the Shrew” the next afternoon.

Shakespeare’s themes
generally are timeless, though modern sensibilities do prickle occasionally. Juliet’s
marrying at age 13 is disturbing, and so is Taming’s last scene when Kate,
starved and sleep-deprived into submission, says: “Thy husband is thy lord, thy
life, thy keeper, thy head, thy sovereign . . .”

Despite such quibbles, I
enjoyed the plays immensely.

There’s hardly a better
place for Shakespeare than the 300-seat Blackfriars Theater at the ASC. Opened
in 2001, it’s a recreation of the Jacobean playhouse in London’s Blackfriars
neighborhood. Blackfriars was the indoor theater where Shakespeare put on his
plays, the Globe his outdoor venue.

The ASC’s repertory
company delivers three or four well-staged productions a week. The versatile actors
also dance, sing and play instruments in acoustic musical performances before
the shows and during intermission.

“We do it with the lights
on,” the theater brags, because Shakespeare produced his plays in what’s called
universal light. That means the audience and actors not only can see each other
but also interact. You don’t need to understand every archaic word to follow
and enjoy the plays.

It’s improbable to find a
first-class Shakespeare theater in a small town in the heart of the Shenandoah
Valley, but like Shakespeare’s work, it’s an enchanting experience.

Take a cue from Lady
Macbeth and “hie thee hither” to see Shakespeare onstage.

Thursday, April 19, 2018

Long before President Donald Trump bestowed a
lavish tax break on the rich and proposed “harvest baskets” for the poor, another
president said:

“That hunger and malnutrition should persist
in a land such as ours is embarrassing and intolerable.”

Name that president. Was it Democrat FDR, JFK
or LBJ?

Guess again. Republican Richard Nixon sent
Congress the optimistic message in May 1969 that “the most bounteous of
nations” should expand food stamps as part of an array of approaches to beat
hunger. The program grew dramatically in the 1970s.

Back then, fighting hunger – not the poor --
was a bipartisan cause.

Then, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan
reaped political hay by demonizing “welfare queens.” In office, he slashed the
social safety net, including food stamps.

When Republican Newt Gingrich ran for president,
briefly, in 2012, he called President Barack Obama “the best food stamp
president in American history.” It wasn’t a compliment.

More than 46 million people received food
stamps that year. As the economy improved, food stamp rolls dropped. About 40
million participated in January 2018, the lowest level since 2010.

But, to borrow a Reagan phrase, here we go
again.

It’s an election year, and the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, as food stamps are officially called, is
a political flash point.

Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee
were in open revolt Wednesday over a bill by Chairman Mike Conaway, Republican
of Texas, that cuts spending and imposes new work requirements for almost all
SNAP participants.

Conaway contended his bill provides
participants “the hope of a job and a skill and a better future for themselves
and their families.”

But Democrats, while supporting current work
requirements, condemned the new rules, which were formulated without their
input.

“Let me be clear: This bill, as currently
written, kicks people off the SNAP program,” said Rep. Collin Peterson of
Minnesota, the committee’s top Democrat, who called it an “ideological attack”
on SNAP. It would create “giant, untested bureaucracies at the state level” lacking
the money needed for meaningful job training, he said.

About 2 million people — particularly in
low-income working families with children — would receive less or lose benefits
altogether, the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said in
an analysis. A few would receive higher benefits, due to changes in how
earnings are counted, but the net effect would still be a significant cut
overall.

At $70 billion a
year, food stamps are about three-quarters of spending in the Farm Bill, which
also pays for crop subsidies, farm credit and land conservation. The bill cuts
food stamp spending by $17.1 billion over 10 years, the Congressional Budget
Office estimates.

The committee approved the bill on a party
line vote, but its future is murky. Even if the full House approves it, the
Senate Agriculture Committee plans to write a bipartisan bill. In the past, an
alliance of rural and urban lawmakers with different priorities has pushed the
Farm Bill through Congress.

It’s worth remembering that 43 percent of SNAP
participants live in a household where someone works. Rules already require
participants to meet work requirements unless exempt because of age, disability
or another reason. Able-bodied adults without dependents – ABAWDs in government
jargon -- 18 to 49 can receive benefits for three months but after that
must work or be in training.

The House bill requires all work-capable
adults aged 18 to 59 who are not disabled or caring for a child under 6 to
demonstrate every month they are working or in job-training 20 hours a week.

Critics see punitive and racial overtones in
the bill.

“The images of `able-bodied’ men not working
are of African American men,” Rep. David Scott, Democrat of Georgia, said at
the hearing.

“I guarantee you, if all the people who were
on food stamps were white, there wouldn’t be this,” he told The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution.

The House bill is an embarrassment, as was the
Trump administration’s plan to begin distributing non-perishable items in
“harvest boxes” to replace some food stamp benefits. That plan was widely
panned as unworkable and seems to have been scrapped.

The House bill should meet a similar end. In
this “most bounteous of nations,” the Senate should start over with a bill
Democrats and Republicans can support.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Normally,
when a big-name public official announces he – it’s usually he -- is quitting
his job to spend more time with his family, it’s a dodge.

Heads
nod, knowing he’s in trouble and has no cushy job waiting on the outside. Few
feel his pain.

For
members of Congress, the family excuse often means the politician faces a tough
re-election or must relinquish his committee chairman gavel because of House
term limit rules. Or both.

Some
go out complaining about the capital’s toxic atmosphere, the dysfunctional
Congress and the never-ending quest for campaign cash.

A
few members this year are also leaving Congress under the cloud of sexual
harassment accusations.

In
contrast, House Speaker Paul Ryan’s surprise announcement Wednesday he won’t seek
another term in Congress was Dad of the Year material. He spoke about going
home to Janesville, Wisconsin, to his wife Janna and children Liza, Sam and
Charlie.

“This
is my 20th year in Congress. My kids weren’t even born when I was
first elected. Our oldest was 13 when I became speaker. Now all three of our
kids are teenagers. And one thing I’ve learned about teenagers is their idea of
an ideal weekend is not necessarily to spend all of the time with their
parents,” Ryan told reporters.

And
here’s the kicker: “What I realize is, if I’m here for one more term, my kids
will only have ever known me as a weekend dad. I just can’t let that happen.”

You don’t have to be in Congress to know what Ryan is talking
about. Many moms and dads in demanding careers have similar nagging guilt.

Perhaps
more than most 48-year-olds, Ryan feels his own mortality. Both his father and
grandfather died of heart attacks before they were 60. At just 16 and a high
school sophomore, Ryan found his father, an attorney, dead in his bed at 55.

Ryan
has always seemed apart from most ambitious politicians. After being GOP
presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012, he was widely expected
to run for president in 2016, but didn’t. He was drafted as Speaker, an
increasingly thankless job, in 2015, after John Boehner resigned from Congress.

As
Speaker, Ryan travels the country extensively, fundraising and campaigning for
GOP candidates. He often sees his kids only on Sunday, he told Fox News.

But
if Ryan’s choice is good for him, it’s also good for Democrats.

By
retiring, he signals the House may be lost and Democrat Nancy Pelosi will return
as Speaker next year. Naturally, Ryan insists the GOP is in great shape and
he’ll still campaign for Republicans. But a lame duck can’t talk convincingly about
the future.

The
customary route would have been to run and then retire after the election. The
former altar boy considered doing that.

“But
just as my conscience is what got me to take this job in the first place, my
conscience could not handle going out that way,” he said.

As
it is, Ryan is the most prominent in an army of incumbent Republicans beating a
retreat from Washington. More than 40 House Republicans are either retiring or
running for another office.

In
Virginia, Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte announced his retirement two days after
a Democratic tide in last November’s state election swept many Republican
incumbents from the legislature. Goodlatte is prohibited under House rules from
staying on as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Ryan
wasn’t even the only Republican to announce his retirement Wednesday.

Rep.
Dennis Ross, Republican of Florida, was announcing his when he looked at Fox
News and saw Ryan was leaving, he told his local paper.

The
filing deadline hasn’t passed in 19 states, so more retirements are possible.

As
if the November election weren’t campaign enough, a battle now kicks off for Speaker,
with Reps. Kevin McCarthy of California and Steve Scalise of Louisiana leading
contenders.

Democrats,
who need a net gain of two dozen seats for control of the House, were delighted
by the unexpected turn of events.

Facebook isn’t a safe place, if it ever was. With the personal
data of 87 million of us shared, we’re ripe for the picking on the dark web, if
we weren’t already.

And that comforting cup of joe soon will come with a cancer
warning label in California. What starts on the Left Coast often wafts east.

Wait a minute. Deep breaths. Should we be scared of our coffee,
too?

Decades of medical research say no. A review in the British
Medical Journal last November examined more than 200 studies and found that
coffee consumption was more often associated with benefit than harm.

Drinking three cups of coffee a day was associated with the
greatest benefit in terms of cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease and
stroke, compared with not drinking coffee, researchers found.

Two studies reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine last
year followed people of various ethnicities around the world for years and found
“people who reported drinking more coffee tended to live longer than those who
reported drinking less.”

The World Health Organization’s International Agency for
Research on Cancer removed coffee from its list of substances “possibly
carcinogenic to humans” in 2016, after it reviewed 1,000 studies and found
“inadequate evidence” of a link to cancer.

So why the
warning label? A chemical called acrylamide, produced during coffee roasting,
may cause cancer. Emphasis on “may.”

A
California judge wrote a preliminary ruling March 30 requiring Starbucks and
dozens of other coffee purveyors in the state to warn customers about
acrylamide. The chemical occurs naturally when some foods are cooked at high
heat. It’s in french fries, potato chips, crackers, bread, cereal, prune juice
and canned black olives.

Acrylamide
is on California’s list of about 800 natural and man-made substances that are
linked to cancer, birth defects or reproductive harm. Under the state’s Prop.
65, which aims to alert consumers to health hazards so they can make smart
decisions, businesses must notify customers if their products contain the
chemicals. It’s why you see warnings on flashlights, Christmas tree lights and pesticides,
among other items.

Lab studies have found acrylamide in high doses in drinking
water increases the risk of cancer in rats and mice. But the doses have been
“as much as 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the levels people might be
exposed to in foods,” says the American Cancer Society, adding, “Based on the
studies done so far, it is not clear if acrylamide affects cancer risk in
people.”

A public interest law firm sued the coffee shops in a California
court in 2010, saying they have a duty to warn consumers. A similar lawsuit led
potato chip makers to reduce the amount of acrylamide in their products to
avoid warning labels.

But the National Coffee Association says acrylamide is in coffee
at “miniscule” levels, occurs naturally and is not an additive. It’s weighing its
legal actions.

“Coffee has been shown, over and over again, to be a healthy
beverage,” said William “Bill” Murray, president and CEO of the coffee
association. “This lawsuit has made a mockery of Prop. 65, has confused
consumers and does nothing to improve public health.”

But the lawsuit and the warning labels do serve a purpose. They help
us gain perspective. We don’t have to give up coffee.

As with most things, health officials advise moderation and they
suggest watching what you put in your coffee. Sugar has replaced fat as a
nutritional pariah.

The WHO’s cancer panel did advise caution on a related
topic.

“Drinking very hot beverages probably causes cancer of the
esophagus in humans,” it said.